A beginner’s guide to feng shui
By Melissa Gulbin, homesite.com.au, September 2004

Ever walked into a house and sensed an unidentifiable "bad energy" which you couldn't quite put your finger on? Or wondered why some people are instinctively uncomfortable sitting with their back to the door?

What is Feng Shui
Translated from Chinese as "Wind and Water", Feng Shui (pronounced foong shway) focuses on life's energy and is a way of understanding how energy moves in our surroundings and how our buildings, their interiors and our environment affect us.

Consultant Liz Wiggins from Feng Shui Living, who practices the Form Compass & Flying Star School explains, "Feng Shui is not a superstition and shouldn't be treated as such. When a consultant comes out to your home you should not be able to tell they have been there. It is not about recommending red tassels, toads or dragons. It is about life's energy and a way of understanding how energy moves in our homes."

Analysing the energy
Liz says that people can leave an imprint of their energies in the environment - particularly negative energies. For example, if a business fails you often see that negative history is passed on to subsequent tenants. The shop may be in need of a "space clearing".

This is the same when buying a home. According to Liz, you can inherit the bad energies of your home's past occupants. As part of the Compass and Flying Star School of Feng Shui, a "space clearing" can be done by an expert to improve the energies of a space.

What's involved
Whether you are pre or post renovation, have just bought a new house or need de-cluttering help, Feng Shui principles offer an age-old solution based more on common sense than superstition.

When conducting a consultation, Liz gets her clients to supply an A4 floor plan of their home or office drawn to scale, which is a particular requirement of the Flying Star school of Feng Shui.

"A few hours are spent at the client's home and a compass direction is taken. This will enable us to draw a chart over the floor plan that will give us an indication of the energies in and around the home. We then work to neutralise any negative energies and enhance positive energies by incorporating the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water). Any recommendations are inexpensive."

Once a chart of the home has been analysed the consultant should have an indication of what you may have been experiencing in this building in regards to your health, relationships and wealth.

This can include an analysis of the land on the outside of a building, including its contours, such as mountains and the placement of water. In addition to the outside influence, the inside of the house must also be considered, focusing significantly on the placement of furniture.

Amongst the myriad of Feng Shui improvements that could be made to a home's layout and furniture placement, the kitchen is a particularly interesting trouble spot.

According to Liz it is important that the stove is not directly in line with the home's entrance. Cooking with one's back to the door can have a negative effect on the cook's mood, which in turn has a negative affect on everyone who eats the meal.

Timing over Time In. That's an oft debated maxim in property circles. I for one believe in the power of both. I'm currently aiming to "time" the market by delaying my purchase until I see some signs of recovery at the macro level. However, once purchased I will hold my properties long term and not turn them over. I aim to extract any capital gain via an LOC to spend on more acquisitions at the right "time". The boom phase can run for years so you can do well by buying consistently through this period. Then take a 7 year breather whilst the market tanks. Lock in your gains at the peak with LOCs and spend that dosh on the other markets with potential when property is flat. In most cases this is the equities markets where I've got my money parked right now.

Good topic and nice to see a "timing" advocate out there making a pitch. Might skip it for my library though as it sounds a bit simplistic...

1. Thank you for sharing with us, Liz's view on the Chinese "Feng Shui".

2. However, I wish to point out that what's Liz did not say is that sometimes depending on our original birth date and timing, what is deemed as a house with good feng shui, which may suit many people, may not actually suit certain category of people of a certain birthday date and birth-time too;- simply becuase they are "not in harmony" with the existing environment in the same house.

3. This also applies to the applications of the Chinese Animals Zodiac.

4. Consequently, there is a need to know our own true personality and its uniqueness and how to find/create a favourable environment which allow ourselves to be in true harmony with Mother Nature and yet allow the fullest positive expressions of our own true inner self.

5. To demystify all these under the New Age philosophy, I will like to suggest that if we learn to be sensitive to our true self and listen sensitively to our own inner intuition, we can also walk into any house and straightaway pick up whether the existing "Feng Shui"/"Chi" airflow in a particular house and instinctively know within ourselves, whether the "Chi"/air flow is "suitable/in harmony" with our inner self or good/bad for an average human being as well as its level of "Chi" flow/strength within the house itself.

6. This is particular true in the case of a newly born baby entering the new house/environment and from the baby's subsequent response to its immediate external environment.

7. Thus, depending on the baby's response outcome, we can clearly deduce instinctively or/and infer/"see" whether the surrounding invisible Chi/"airs" flow whether they are in harmony/"harmful" to an average human being or not.

8. This has been my/my family own personal experiences, so far.

9. It is as if we happen to possess the gift of the so-called "Third Eye" abilities so as to be able to "see"/"feel"/"sense" the invisible things around us in the immediate environment that the average normal people do not normally see in the real world.

10. Equally intriguing and fascinating for me, is also to observe/ learn how the concept of "telepathy" or "mind-to-mind" soul communication between people who have highly intimately close to one another, actually operates in real lives, such that 2 separate independant people are able to read each other mind's accurately and clearly, even though no actual words were verbalised aloud at all, in the real physical world.